Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

The Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union^[a] was the highest organ of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union between two congresses. According to party statutes, the committee directed all party and governmental activities. The Party Congress elected its members.

During

By the time of Stalin's death in 1953, the Central Committee had become largely a symbolic organ that was responsible to the Politburo, and not the other way around. The death of Stalin revitalised the Central Committee, and it became an important institution during the power struggle to succeed Stalin. Following Nikita Khrushchev's accession to power, the Central Committee still played a leading role; it overturned the Politburo's decision to remove Khrushchev from office in 1957. In 1964 the Central Committee ousted Khrushchev from power and elected Leonid Brezhnev as First Secretary. The Central Committee was an important organ in the beginning of Brezhnev's rule, but lost effective power to the Politburo. From then on, until the era of Mikhail Gorbachev (General Secretary from 1985 to 1991), the Central Committee played a minor role in the running of the party and state – the Politburo once again operated as the highest political organ in the Soviet Union.

For the majority of Central Committee's history, plenums were held in the meeting chamber of the Soviet of the Union in the Grand Kremlin Palace. The offices of the administrative staff of the Central Committee were located in the 4th building of Staraya Square in Moscow, in what is now the Russian Presidential Administration Building.

History

Background: 1898–1917

At the founding congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (the predecessor of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union) Vladimir Lenin was able to gain enough support for the establishment of an all-powerful central organ at the next congress.^[4] This central organ was to become the Central Committee, and it had the rights to decide all party issues, with the exception of local ones.^[4] The group which supported the establishment of a Central Committee at the 2nd Congress called themselves the Bolsheviks, and the losers (the minority) were given the name Mensheviks by their own leader, Julius Martov.^[5] The Central Committee would contain three members, and would supervise the editorial board of Iskra, the party newspaper.^[5] The first members of the Central Committee were Gleb Krzhizhanovsky, Friedrich Lengnik and Vladimir Noskov.^[5] Throughout its history, the party and the Central Committee were riven by factional infighting and repression by government authorities.^[6] Lenin was able to persuade the Central Committee, after a long and heated discussion, to initiate the October Revolution.^[6] The majority of the members had been skeptical of initiating the revolution so early, and it was Lenin who was able to persuade them.^[6] The motion to carry out a revolution in October 1917 was passed with 10 in favour, and two against by the Central Committee.^[6]

Lenin era: 1917–1922

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The Central Committee, according to Lenin, was to be the supreme authority of the party.^[7] Long before he joined forces with Lenin and became the Soviet military leader, Leon Trotsky had once criticised this view, stating "our rules represent 'organisational nonconfidence' of the party toward its parts, that is, supervision over all local, district, national and other organisations ... the organisation of the party takes place of the party itself; the Central Committee takes the place of the organisation; and finally the dictator takes the place of the Central Committee."^[8]

During the first years in power, under Lenin's rule, the Central Committee was the key decision-making body in both practice and theory, and decisions were made through majority votes.^[9] For example, the Central Committee voted for or against signing a peace treaty with the Germans between 1917 and 1918 during World War I; the majority voted in favour of peace when Trotsky backed down in 1918.^[9] The result of the vote was the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.^[9] During the heated debates in the Central Committee about a possible peace with the Germans, Lenin did not have a majority; both Trotsky and Nikolai Bukharin had more support for their own position than Lenin.^[10] Only when Lenin sought a coalition with Trotsky and others, were negotiations with the Germans voted through with a simple majority.^[10] Criticism of other officials was allowed during these meetings, for instance, Karl Radek said to Lenin (criticising his position of supporting peace with the Germans), "If there were five hundred courageous men in Petrograd, we would put you in prison."^[11] The decision to negotiate peace with the Germans was only reached when Lenin threatened to resign, which in turn led to a temporary coalition between Lenin's supporters and those of Trotsky and others.^[11] No sanctions were invoked on the opposition in the Central Committee following the decision.^[11]

The system had many faults, and opposition to Lenin and what many saw as his excessive centralisation policies came to the leadership's attention during the

When Lenin died, the Soviet leadership was uncertain how the building of the new, socialist society should proceed.

Following the 13th Congress, another power struggle with a different focus began; this time socio-economic policies were the prime motivators for the struggle.[30] Trotsky, Zinoviev and Kamenev supported rapid industrialisation and a planned economy, while Bukharin, Rykov and Tomsky supported keeping the NEP.^[31] Stalin, in contrast to the others, has often been viewed as standing alone; as Jerry F. Hough explained, he has often been viewed as "a cynical Machiavellian interested only in power."^[31]

None of the leading figures of that era were rigid in economic policy, and all of them had supported the NEP previously.^[32] With the good harvests in 1922, several problems arose, especially the role of heavy industry and inflation. While agriculture had recovered substantially, the heavy industrial sector was still in recession, and had barely recovered from the pre-war levels.^[32] The State Planning Commission (Gosplan) supported giving subsidies to heavy industries, while the People's Commissariat for Finance opposed this, citing major inflation as their reason.^[32] Trotsky was the only one in the Politburo who supported Gosplan in its feud with the Commissariat for Finance.^[32]

In 1925, Stalin began moving against Zinoviev and Kamenev.

From 1934 to 1953, three congresses were held (a breach of the party rule which stated that a congress must be convened every third year), one conference and 23 Central Committee meetings.^[37] This is in deep contrast to the Lenin era (1917–1924), when six Congresses were held, five conferences and 69 meetings of the Central Committee.^[37] The Politburo did not convene once between 1950, when Nikolai Voznesensky was killed, and 1953.^[37] In 1952, at the 19th Party Congress (5–14 October 1952) the Politburo was abolished and replaced by the Presidium.^[37]

In 1930 the Central Committee departments were reorganised, because the Secretariat had lost control over the economy, because of the

The majority of the Central Committee members elected at the 17th Party Congress were killed during, or shortly after, the Great Purge when Nikolai Yezhov and Lavrentiy Beria headed the NKVD.^[45] Grigory Kaminsky, at a Central Committee meeting, spoke against the Great Purge, and shortly after was arrested and killed.^[46] In short, during the Great Purge, the Central Committee was liquidated.^[47] Stalin managed to liquidate the Central Committee with the committee's own consent, as Molotov once put it "This gradually occurred. Seventy expelled 10–15 persons, then 60 expelled 15 ... In essence this led to a situation where a minority of this majority remained within the Central Committee ... Such was the gradual but rather rapid process of clearing the way."^[48] Several members were expelled from the Central Committee through voting.^[47] Of the 139 members elected to the Central Committee at the 17th Congress, 98 people were killed in the period 1936–40.^[49] In this period the Central Committee decreased in size; a 78 percent decrease.^[49] By the 18th Congress there were only 31 members of the Central Committee, and of these only two were reelected.^[50]

Many of the victims of the

When Stalin died on 5 March 1953,

Beria was no easy man to defeat, and his ethnicisation policies (that a local or republican leaders had to have ethnic origins, and speak the language of the given area) proved to be a tool to strengthen the MVD's grip on local party organs.[59] Khrushchev and Malenkov, who had begun receiving information which stated that the MVD had begun spying on party officials, started to act in the spring of 1953.^[59] Beria was defeated at the next Presidium plenums by a majority against him, and not long after, Khrushchev and Malenkov started to plan Beria's fall from power.^[60] However, this was no easy task, as Beria was able to inspire fear in his colleagues.^[60] In Khrushchev's and Malenkov's first discussion with Kliment Voroshilov, Voroshilov did not want anything to do with it, because he feared "Beria's ears".^[60] However, Khrushchev and Malenkov were able to gather enough support for Beria's ouster, but only when a rumour of a potential coup led by Beria began to take hold within the party leadership.^[60] Afraid of the power Beria held, Khrushchev and Malenkov were prepared for a potential civil war.^[61] This did not happen, and Beria was forced to resign from all his party posts on 26 June, and was later executed on 23 December.^[61] Beria's fall also led to criticism of Stalin; the party leadership accused Beria of using Stalin, a sick and old man, to force his own will on the Soviet Union during Stalin's last days.^[62] This criticism, and much more, led party and state newspapers to launch more general criticism of Stalin and the Stalin era.^[63] A party history pamphlet went so far as to state that the party needed to eliminate "the incorrect, un-Marxist interpretation of the role of the individual in history, which is expressed in propaganda by the idealist theory of the cult of personality, which is alien to Marxism".^[62]

Beria's downfall led to the collapse of his "empire"; the powers of the MVD was curtailed, and the

The anti-Khrushchev minority in the Presidium was augmented by those opposed to Khrushchev's proposals to decentralize authority over industry, which struck at the heart of Malenkov's power base.[70] During the first half of 1957, Malenkov, Vyacheslav Molotov, and Lazar Kaganovich worked to quietly build support to dismiss Khrushchev.^[70] At an 18 June Presidium meeting at which two Khrushchev supporters were absent, the plotters moved that Bulganin, who had joined the scheme, take the chair, and proposed other moves which would effectively demote Khrushchev and put themselves in control.^[70] Khrushchev objected on the grounds that not all Presidium members had been notified, an objection which would have been quickly dismissed had Khrushchev not held firm control over the military.^[70] As word leaked of the power struggle, members of the Central Committee, which Khrushchev controlled, streamed to Moscow, many flown there aboard military planes, and demanded to be admitted to the meeting.^[70] While they were not admitted, there were soon enough Central Committee members in Moscow to call an emergency Party Congress, which effectively forced the leadership to allow a Central Committee plenum.^[70] At that meeting, the three main conspirators were dubbed the Anti-Party Group, accused of factionalism and complicity in Stalin's crimes.^[70] The three were expelled from the Central Committee and Presidium, as was former Foreign Minister and Khrushchev client Dmitri Shepilov who joined them in the plot.^[70] Molotov was sent as Ambassador to Mongolian People's Republic; the others were sent to head industrial facilities and institutes far from Moscow.^[70]

At the

Before initiating the

By 1971, Brezhnev had succeeded in becoming first amongst equals in the Politburo and the Central Committee.^[78] Six years later, Brezhnev had succeeded in filling the majority of the Central Committee with Brezhnevites.^[78] But as Peter M.E. Volten noted, "the relationship between the general secretary and the central committee remained mutually vulnerable and mutually dependent."^[78] The collective leadership of the Brezhnev era emphasised the stability of cadres in the party.^[78] Because of this, the survival ratio of full members of the Central Committee increased gradually during the era.^[78] At the 23rd Congress (29 March – 8 April 1966) the survival ratio was 79.4 percent, it decreased to 76.5 percent at the 24th Congress (30 March – 9 April 1971), increased to 83.4 percent at the 25th Congress (24 February – 5 March 1976) and at its peak, at the 26th Congress (23 February – 3 March 1981), it reached 89 percent.^[78] Because the size of the Central Committee expanded, the majority of members were either in their first or second term.^[79] It expanded to 195 in 1966, 141 in 1971, 287 in 1976 and 319 in 1981; of these, new membership consisted of 37, 30 and 28 percent respectively.^[79]

Andropov–Chernenko interregnum: 1982–1985

Andropov was elected the party's General Secretary on 12 November 1982 by a decision of the Central Committee.

Gorbachev's policy of glasnost (literally openness) meant the gradual democratisation of the party.^[98] Because of this, the role of the Central Committee was strengthened.^[98] Several old apparatchiks lost their seats to more open-minded officials during the Gorbachev era.^[99] The plan was to make the Central Committee an organ where discussion took place; and in this Gorbachev succeeded.^[99]

By 1988, several people demanded reform within the Communist Party itself.

Under Lenin the Central Committee functioned like the Politburo did during the post-Stalin era, as the party's leading collective organ.[107] However, as the membership in the Central Committee steadily increased, its role was eclipsed by the Politburo.^[107] Between congresses the Central Committee functioned as the Soviet leadership's source for legitimacy.^[107] The decline in the Central Committee's standing began in the 1920s, and it was reduced to a compliant body of the Party leadership during the Great Purge.^[107] According to party rules, the Central Committee was to convene at least twice a year to discuss political matters (but not matters relating to military policy).^[98]

Elections

Delegates at the Party Congresses elected the members of the Central Committee.^[108] Nevertheless, there were no competitions for the seats of the Central Committee. The Soviet leadership decided beforehand who would be nominated to the Central Committee.^[109] In the Brezhnev era, for instance, delegates at Party Congresses lost the power to vote in secret against candidates endorsed by the leadership.^[109] For instance, at the congresses in 1962 and 1971, the delegates elected the Central Committee unanimously.^[109] According to Robert Vincent Daniels the Central Committee was instead an assembly of representatives than an assembly of individuals.^[110] The election of members often had "an automatic character"; members were elected to represent various institutions.^[110] While Jerry F. Hough agrees with Daniels's analysis, he states that other factors must be included; for example, an official with a bad relationship with the General Secretary would not be elected to the Central Committee.^[110]

The view that the Politburo nominated the members of the Central Committee is also controversial, considering the fact that each new Central Committee were, in most cases, filled with supporters of the General Secretary.^[110] If the Politburo indeed nominated members and candidates of the Central Committee, various factions would have arisen.^[110] While the Politburo theory states indirectly that the Party Congress is a non-important process, another theory, the circular-flow-of-power theory assumed that the General Secretary was able to build a power base among the party's regional secretaries.^[111] These secretaries, in turn, would elect delegates who supported the General Secretary.^[111]

Apparatus

Commissions

At the

The commissions did not convene until early 1989, but some commission heads were given responsibilities immediately.[113] For instance, Medvedev was tasked with creating "a new definition of socialism", a task which would prove impossible once Gorbachev became an enthusiastic supporter of some social democratic policies and thinking.^[113] Medvedev eventually concluded that the party still upheld Marxism–Leninism, but would have to accept some bourgeois policies.^[113]

Central Control Commission

The Party Control Commission (Russian: Комиссия партийного контроля при ЦК КПСС (КПК)) was responsible for, in the words of the Party constitution, "... a) to oversee the implementation of decisions of the Party and the CPSU (b), b) investigate those responsible for violating party discipline, and c) to prosecute violations of party ethics."^[114] The 18th Party Congress, held in 1939, recognised that the central task of the Control Commission would be to enhance the control of the Party control.^[114] The congress decided that the Control Commission would be, from then on, elected by the Central Committee in the immediate aftermath of the Congress, instead of being elected by the congress itself.^[114] Changes were also made to the constitution.^[114] It stated that the "Control Commission a) oversaw the implementation of the directives of the CPSU, (b) and the Soviet-economic agencies and party organisations; c) examined the work of local party organisations, d) investigate those responsible for abusing party discipline and the Party constitution".^[114]

Departments

The leader of a department was usually given the titles "head" (Russian: zaveduiuschchii),^[115] but in practice the Secretariat had a major say in the running of the departments; for example, five of eleven secretaries headed their own departments in 1978.^[116] But normally specific secretaries were given supervising duties over one or more departments.^[116] Each department established its own cells, which specialised in one or more fields.^[117] These cells were called sections. By 1979, there were between 150 and 175 sections, of these only a few were known by name outside the Soviet Union.^[117] An example of a department is, for instance, the Land Cultivation section of the Agriculture Department or the Africa section of the International Department.^[117] As with the departments, a section was headed by an office named head.^[118] The official name for a departmental staff member was instructor (Russian: instruktor).^[119]

During the Gorbachev era, a variety of departments made up the Central Committee apparatus.^[120] The Party Building and Cadre Work Department assigned party personnel in the nomenklatura system.^[120] The State and Legal Department supervised the armed forces, KGB, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the trade unions, and the Procuracy.^[120] Before 1989 the Central Committee had several departments, but several were abolished in that year.^[120] Among these departments there was a Central Committee Department responsible for the economy as a whole, one for machine building, and one for the chemical industry, and so on.^[120] The party abolished these departments in an effort to remove itself from the day-to-day management of the economy in favor of government bodies and a greater role for the market, as a part of the perestroika process.^[120]

General Secretary

The post of General Secretary was established under the name Technical Secretary in April 1917, and was first held by Elena Stasova.^[121] Originally, in its first two incarnations, the office performed mostly secretarial work.^[122] The post of Responsible Secretary was then established in 1919 to perform administrative work.^[122] The post of General Secretary was established in 1922, and Joseph Stalin was elected its first officeholder.^[123] The General Secretary, as a post, was a purely administrative and disciplinary position, whose role was to do no more than determine party membership composition.^[123] Stalin used the principles of democratic centralism to transform his office into that of party leader, and later leader of the Soviet Union.^[123] In 1934, the 17th Party Congress did not elect a General Secretary and Stalin was an ordinary secretary until his death in 1953, although he remained the de facto leader without diminishing his own authority.^[124]

The Organisational Bureau, usually abbreviated Orgburo, was an executive party organ.^[131] The Central Committee organised the Orgburo.^[131] Under Lenin, the Orgburo met at least three times a week, and it was obliged to report to the Central Committee every second week.^[131] The Orgburo directed all organisational tasks of the party.^[131] In the words of Lenin, "the Orgburo allocates forces, while the Politburo decides policy."^[131] In theory, the Orgburo decided all policies relating to administrative and personnel related issues.^[131] Decisions reached by the Orgburo would in turn be implemented by the Secretariat.^[131] The Secretariat could formulate and decide policies on party administration and personnel if all Orgburo members agreed with the decision.^[131] The Politburo frequently meddled in the affairs of the Orgburo, and became active in deciding administrative and personnel policy.^[131] Even so, the Orgburo remained an independent organ during Lenin's time, even if the Politburo could veto its resolutions.^[131] The Orgburo was an active and dynamic organ, and was in practice responsible for personnel selection for high-level posts; personnel selection for unimportant posts or lower-tier posts were the unofficial responsibility of the Secretariat.^[132] However, the Orgburo was gradually eclipsed by the Secretariat.^[133] The Orgburo was abolished in 1952 at the 19th Party Congress.^[134]

Party education system

The Academy of Social Sciences (

The Higher Party School (Russian: Высшая партийная школа, abbreviated HPS (Russian: ВПШ)) was the organ responsible for teaching cadres in the Soviet Union.[139] It was the successor of the Communist Academy which was established in 1918.^[139] The HPS itself was established in 1939 as the Moscow Higher Party School, and it offered its students a two-year training course for becoming a Party official.^[140] It was reorganised in 1956 to that it could offer more specialised ideological training.^[140] In 1956 the school in Moscow was opened for students from socialist countries.^[140] The Moscow Higher Party School was the party school with the highest standing.^[140] The school itself had eleven faculties until a Central Committee resolution in 1972 which demanded a shake-up in the curriculum.^[141] The first regional (schools outside Moscow) Higher Party School was established in 1946^[141] By the early 1950s there existed 70 Higher Party Schools.^[141] During the reorganisation drive of 1956, Khrushchev closed-down thirteen of them, reclassified 29 of them as inter-republican and inter-oblast schools.^[141]

The HPS carried out the ideological and theoretical training and retraining of the Party and government officials.^[139] Courses included the history of the Communist Party, Marxist–Leninist philosophy, scientific communism, political economy of Party-building, the international communist movement, workers and the national liberation movements, the Soviet economy, agricultural economics, public law and Soviet development, journalism and literature, Russian and foreign languages among others.^[139] To study at the Higher Party School Party members had to have a higher education.^[139] Admission of students was conducted on the recommendation of the Central Committee of the Union republics, territorial and regional committees of the party.^[139]

The Institute of Marxism–Leninism (Russian: Институт марксизма-ленинизма, abbreviated IML (Russian: ИМЛ)) was responsible for doctrinal scholarship.

The Institute of Social Sciences (Russian: Институт общественных наук) was established in 1962.[143] Its principal function was to educate foreign Communists from socialist countries and from Third World countries with socialist orientations. The institute came under the jurisdiction of the International Department of the Central Committee under Gorbachev. There was a significant minority within the institute who wished for, or believed in political reform.^[144]

Politburo

When

According to Jerry F. Hough the Politburo in the post-Lenin period, played the role of the Soviet cabinet, and the Central Committee as the parliament to which it was responsible.^[146] Under Stalin the Politburo did not meet often as a collective unit, but was still an important body – many of Stalin's closet protégés were members.^[147] Membership in the Politburo gradually increased in the era from Lenin until Brezhnev, partly because of Stalin's centralisation of power in the Politburo.^[147] The Politburo was renamed in 1952 to the Presidium, and kept that name until 1966.^[147] According to Brezhnev, the Politburo met at least once a week, usually on Thursdays.^[148] A normal session would last between three and six hours. In between the 24th Party Congress (30 March – 9 April 1971) and the 25th Party Congress (24 February – 5 March 1976), the Politburo convened, at least officially, 215 times.^[148] According to Brezhnev, the Politburo decides on "the most important and urgent questions of internal and foreign policy".^[148] The Politburo exercised both executive and legislative powers.^[149]

Pravda

Pravda (translates to The Truth) was a leading newspaper in the Soviet Union and an organ of the Central Committee.^[150] The Organisational Department of the Central Committee was the only organ empowered to relieve Pravda editors from their duties.^[151] Pravda was at the beginning a project begun by members of the Ukrainian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1905.^[152] Leon Trotsky was approached about the possibility of running the new paper because of his previous work in Kyivan Thought, a Ukrainian paper.^[152] The first issue was published on 3 October 1908.^[152] The paper was originally published in Lvov, but until the publication of the sixth issue in November 1909, the whole operation was moved to Vienna, Austria-Hungary.^[152] During the Russian Civil War, sales of Pravda were curtailed by Izvestia, the government run newspaper.^[153] At the time, the average reading figure for Pravda was 130,000.^[153] This Pravda (the one headquartered in Vienna) published its last issue in 1912, and was succeeded by a new newspaper, also called Pravda, headquartered in St. Petersburg the same year.^[154] This newspaper was dominated by the Bolsheviks.^[154] The paper's main goal was to promote Marxist–Leninist philosophy and expose the lies of the bourgeoisie.^[155] In 1975 the paper reached a circulation of 10.6 million people.^[155]

Secretariat

The Secretariat headed the CPSU's central apparatus and was solely responsible for the development and implementation of party policies.^[156] It was legally empowered to take over the duties and functions of the Central Committee when it was not in plenum (did not hold a meeting).^[156] Many members of the Secretariat concurrently held a seat in the Politburo.^[157] According to a Soviet textbook on party procedures, the Secretariat's role was that of "leadership of current work, chiefly in the realm of personnel selection and in the organisation of the verification of fulfillment [of party-state decisions]".^[157] "Selections of personnel" (Russian: podbor kadrov) in this instance means the maintenance of general standards and the criteria for selecting various personnel. "Verification of fulfillment" (Russian: proverka ispolneniia) of party and state decisions meant that the Secretariat instructed other bodies.^[158]

The Secretariat controlled, or had a major say in, the running of Central Committee departments.^[116] The members of the Secretariat, the secretaries, supervised Central Committee departments, or headed them.^[116] However, there were exceptions such as Mikhail Suslov and Andrei Kirilenko who supervised other secretaries on top of their individual responsibilities over Soviet policy (foreign relations and ideological affairs in the case of Suslov; personnel selection and the economy in the case of Kirilenko).^[116]

While the General Secretary formally headed the Secretariat, his responsibilities not only as the leader of the party but the entire Soviet state left him little opportunity to chair its sessions let alone provide detailed oversight of its work.^[159] This led to the creation of a de facto Deputy General Secretary^[116] otherwise known as a "Second Secretary" who was responsible for the day-to-day running of the Secretariat.^[160]

The powers of the Secretariat were weakened under

The Secretariat was revitalised at the 28th Party Congress (2 July 1990 – 13 July 1990). A newly established office, the Deputy General Secretary, became the official Director of the Secretariat.^[162] Gorbachev chaired the first post-Congress session, but after that Vladimir Ivashko, the Deputy General Secretary, chaired its meetings.^[162] Though the Secretariat was revitalised, it never regained the authority it held in the pre-Gorbachev days.^[162] The Secretariat's authority was strengthened within the limits of the institutions and political rules, which had been introduced under Gorbachev – a return to the old-days was impossible.^[162]

Physical location

The Central Committee had its offices on the Staraya Square in Moscow. There were over a dozen buildings in that area, known as the "party town", that the Central Committee controlled. There was a three-story restaurant, buffets, travel bureau, a post office, bookstore, a cinema and a sports center. They employed about 1,500 people in the 1920s, and about 3,000 in 1988.^{[citation needed]}

Legacy

The Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union is commemorated in several Soviet jokes.

One of such jokes recalled the Prime Minister of Russia Vladimir Putin on 20 April 2011 answering a question of one of parliamentary about introducing own regulatory policies for the Internet,^[163][164] who said following using one of the Radio Yerevan jokes,
"Do you know as a joke how there were asking and answering about what the difference is between Tseka (Ce-Ka) and Cheka? Tseka tsks (in Russia it is a sound that requests silence), and Cheka chiks (snips)." Later Putin added, "so, it is that we do not intend to chik anyone".^[165][166]

See also

• Bednota – daily newspaper for peasants from March 1918 to January 1931
• Organisation of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
• Hymn of the Bolshevik Party

Notes

References

Bibliography